... part of our PreK
curriculum and it brings numbers alive and shows how
math is important to our world

Numberland fits in beautifully with
the Early Years Curriculum. It is exploratory, learning
through play, based on role play, allows children to
develop their personal, social and emotional skills and
"hands on"

Getting children to love maths is
something I know lots of schools find difficult but this
type of scheme is ideal for making maths fun!

Not only is Numberland itself a
great concept but the book is a valuable tool

Numberland is a fun and exciting way
to teach children about the world of numbers
We were looking for a fun way to introduce numbers and
shapes to our learners. Numberland is a fantastic
concept
I highly recommend Numberland to all Pre-primary Schools... the concept has great value and
offers something different to U.K. and North American
early years maths approaches, as I have not seen
anything like it in my subsequent explorations or
conversations with early childhood education
professionals

... a fantastic experience for
children where number work can be easily integrated
with other areas in the early years

Research I have read about
early years maths through my studies and my own
experience with children validates what is suggested in
the Handbook

... also ignites imagination and
creativity

We started using Numberland in Year
One with a group of children who are struggling counting
in general. We are pleased with the response from the
children

What I like most ... is the
complexity of the introduction of numbers and shapes.
Through Numberland the learners encounter those numbers
in their relationship to other numbers. They do not
learn each number as separate entity
It helps learners to extend their problem-solving
abilities

THE CHILDREN ...

... are completely enjoying it!

... have connected on an emotional
level to the characters and are very enthusiastic about
the Numberland sessions

... in year 1 are so excited about Numberland, they have
been talking about it in school and at home

... even brought their own items from home to decorate
the number gardens, and are noticing when particular
numbers are said in everyday conversation

... have become excited about maths and it is so good to
see how engaged they are with it all

... love the fairy tale element and the two characters

A group of girls sat for a whole
afternoon making their own characters (one to four) to
take home and another group made maps of Numberland,
including Number Lane!

My class fully embraced the number
puppets, their gardens, houses and of course their
favorite, the naughty goblin Hodgeypodgey

Our learners have so much fun and
can’t wait for the next number/shape to get introduced.
They are more motivated and excited with each week

I very quickly witnessed children
who had previously not demonstrated a keen interest in
maths became very animated and active in their learning

All the equipments promote
communication among learners

It also impacted on the children's
speaking and listening skills as the activity sparked
some interesting debates and forced the children to
think more deeply about their mathematical knowledge as
they challenged each other to prove their reasoning

Holleyhill Primary
School, Selston (UK)The concept of Numberland is working
REALLY well for us! Reasoning and maths talk is much
more prominent and interest/enthusiasm and creativity in
maths is much higher than previous classes since
implementing what I could find out from the internet
earlier this year. Children are becoming 'producers' of
maths instead of 'consumers'. Made my own resources and
added some characters borrowed from another source who
live in each house. LOVE IT!

Hunsley Primary
School, North Ferriby (UK)

When our primary
maths co-ordinator and Specialist Leader
in Education, Liz Russell, first saw
Numberland and its amazing resources at
the BCME Conference in 2014, she
absolutely knew this was the perfect
vehicle for engaging our first wave of
Reception children in their learning about
number and shape. The tactile resources
encourage all of the pupils to create
exciting models and use their imagination
to fill each numbered house and garden
with corresponding items: flowers,
ladybirds, animals. When the children took
their first ‘visit’ to Numberland,
accompanied by a song, they were excited
and charmed by the experience.

Each of the stories associated with
Numberland have a magical quality which
the children have been drawn to and
teaching staff have been equally inspired
to personalise and develop the use of
Numberland resources explicitly to suit
our school. On first encountering
Numberland’s houses and gardens, the
children’s faces said it all – you often
strive for awe and wonder in Early Year
settings and it clearly appeared that day.
The resource was used initially to help
support the children’s developing
understanding of each number, 1 to 10 -
their counting, their quick number
recognition and their emerging deeper
understanding of what each number entails
– as we say, ‘the fiveness of five!’.

Not only does Numberland develop number
skills and mathematical knowledge, but it
also enhances children’s imagination, fine
motor, critical reasoning and
communication skills – even their social
skills - as they learn to share,
collaborate and co-operate. We look
forward to further exploring the many
possibilities of Numberland with our new
Reception class in September. Amy Langmead, KS1
teacher and maths-coordinator (UK)

It was a few years ago
when I moved down from KS2 into KS1 (Year 1) when I
came across
Numberland.
I had a group of children still struggling with
one-to-one correspondence. I did some research and
came across Numberland – it was featured on the NCETM.
It sounded perfect so I emailed Barbara and ordered a
copy. When I received it, I was excited at the
prospect of undertaking the concept and ordered the
resources needed so we could get started straight
away. I initially ran Numberland as a daily
intervention for 6 children in my class, they covered
the Numberland program for 6 weeks and it had the
exact impact I had hoped for. Their one-to-one
correspondence was there, along with this new found
confidence to question and explain their Mathematical
understanding.
From then on, we have used Numberland to teach Maths
in Reception during the Autumn Term. The children
absolutely love it! They love the fairy-tale style
characters, and are developing essential
problem-solving skills from an early age. Numberland
is the perfect tool for: engaging the children,
fostering a love for Maths, developing higher-level
problem solving skills, along with consolidating a
deep-rooted conceptual understanding of basic number.
We have recently had the addition of a Nursery, and
this year Numberland has also been used in there. Once
again, the children love the characters and the
resources and are developing a real love for Maths.

I feel that the structure of the program is what makes
it so effective. The idea that the children have to
negotiate, reason and justify whilst relating this to
numbers, is what makes it perfect for developing
early, yet essential, problem-solving skills. The
children are led to ‘teach’ the teacher, as it is up
to them to explain why certain items are allowed in
certain gardens. This style of ‘learning and teaching’
has been proved to be the most effective. As we all
know, if we get told something – a rule or a procedure
– we are unlikely to retain it on a long-term basis,
but if we manage to figure a rule or procedure out for
ourselves, by developing links and concepts, it is
more likely that we actually understand the concept,
therefore it is more likely that we will retain it.
This is why Numberland is absolutely perfect for
teaching those early number skills. (pdf)

This program has
surpassed my biggest expectations. I left Carola’s
training and just knew I had to incorporate it into
our school. I had no idea that it would make
such a big impact on our children.Thank you so much for
developing this program and thank you for bringing the
training and materials to the United States. I
am very grateful. I know that we are providing
our children with a strong foundation through
Numberland.My team and I have a
PreK class of 17 children in Plano, TX. We are
now in our fourth
week of Numberland and parents are reporting to us that
their children are telling them that they have to be
at school on the Numberland days. And, not a day goes
by that one of our children doesn’t make a reference
to Numberland by pointing out the number we are on and finding
objects in our world with that number or doing basic
math concepts in different settings throughout our day
without our prompting. They are excited about it and
about the Princess and HodgeyPodgey and will say
things like: oh no, HodgeyPodgey is at it again when
something happens in our classroom. They also
love the stories and the Numberland Number songs as
well as the gathering song.

Just to give you an idea
of how well your program is working in our
school….today is Monday, we did Numberland on
Wednesday of last week and today someone mentioned on
the playground that they found 3 shovels (we have 3
shovels in our garden bag for Number 3) and someone
else mentioned HodgeyPodgey in our classroom. They
also reference it when they are adding together
objects and will say: Just like in Numberland.

Updates
March 12, 2013
Although we only started it in September, 2012 - our
preK class at our school has learned so much from
it. We are now extending the visits and developing
the lesson plans to specifically talk about adding
the numbers together. ie: Add Number 10's garden to
Number 1's garden and you have 11 etc. They are also
discovering that if we take the actual numbers and
put them together, we can see the larger number. ie:
Physically placing Number 1 and Number 3 together
makes Number 13 and then we talk about what Number
13's garden would look like. The opportunities for
this program are endless. We are still very excited
about it and so are our children.A special visit to
Number 10Last Wednesday was a
particularly busy day for
us. It was designated as a
Numberland day but we were not sure how
we would fit it in. So, instead of
having NumberLand in our music room,
Numberland joined our room for the
day. It was a huge success.
Princess Forget Me Not and Hodgey Podgey
had a place of honor on a table in the
middle of our room so they could watch
everything. The children were
thrilled.

We brought in Number 10 with his
garden and all his pieces and put him
in our block center, we closed the
blocks so that Number 10 and his
garden were the
focus of that center. Then,
across the room from Number 10, were 8
and it's garden and 2 and its garden.
They were placed on a table together
so that the children could see that if
they took two things from Number 2's
garden and added it to Number 8's
garden, then they would have the same
amount that Number 10 had in his
garden. Wow, was that ever
exciting. We explained that to
them during our arrival circle time
and they got to set up and play in the
gardens during our center times.

We also brought in Number Lane and to
enter our classroom, they had to walk
Number Lane. They were excited to have
NumberLand in the room and they brought
the Princess and Hodgey Podgey to "life"
instead of us using the puppets.
It is a day they will remember. We also
played the NumberLand CD all day long in
the background. They love the
NumberLand song...."Come on children,
take a hand, let's go and visit
NumberLand, step by step".......they get
up upon hearing the song and grab the
hand of a friend so they can go and
visit NumberLand. A day for parentsEarly
in February, we hosted a day for the
parents to come in and see NumberLand.
Our parents have really been curious
about this NumberLand:)
that their children go home talking
about. It took 3 announcements that day
telling the parents that they could
leave once the children began setting up
the gardens before parents started to
leave. I think they were so
intrigued by the concept and how engaged
their children were that they wanted to
see
more. It was, in our opinion, a
very successful morning. Background knowledge
with Number 9
We regard everything about NumberLand as
a learning tool and utilize it as
such. For instance, Number 9's
trip in the hot air balloon, we learned
about different traditions of the
countries that Number 9 visited.
We pretended that he went to China and
Taiwan, and Germany, and Great Britain,
and India, and the Netherlands, etc. and
we circled around with our hot air
balloon and did an activity from each of
those countries. They were quick
little activities like dancing a jig
when we went to Ireland.
We chose those countries because this
year, we have students from all of those
places or they have heritage there. We
use the dice suggested in one of the
other Numbers activities suggestions to
play games as well.

Carola Hauer-Berry,
teacher at the Christian Child Development Center,
Lewisville, Texas (USA)Numberland is a fun and
exciting way to teach children about the world of
numbers. My class fully embraced the number puppets,
their gardens, houses and of course their favorite,
the naughty goblin Hodgeypodgey.

The fantasy world of the numbers adds an intriguing
aspect, the hands-on manipulatives make it a 'real'
number learning experience.

I have never seen children so excited and motivated to
learn about numbers as with Number Land. I also like
how all kinds of information is woven into the 'Number
Stories'. (For example - the 6 colors of a rainbow and
how to mix colors)

Today, Numberland is part of
the school's concept. In August 2012, 60 teachers
were enthused by a training Carola gave on
Numberland.

Reeli Tänavsuu,
kindergarten teacher and head in Pärnu (Estonia)

We started to travel to Numberland in November 2011
with 4 groups of children: 2 groups age 3-4 and 2 age
5-7 years old.

The children were
excited about the number puppets and their small
houses. All stories give challenges for them.
You just have to see their surprised faces when they
discover some connections in the story about the
numbers! For example the story about Mayor 5’s
birthday – they all got tickets to a birthday
celebration and in they go just with 5, but all
tickets only show numbers 1 to 4... Suddenly one
5-year girl discovered that she can go in with her
friend while she has
2 and friend has 3 on the ticket. Then almost all
could go in, but two children couldn’t – their tickets
showed 2 and 4 which made 6 instead of 5. The teacher
just asked, how they could enter and who could help?
Immediately there were two children with suitable
tickets, so they combined 3 with 2 and 4 with 1 and
joined the Mayor’s birthday party. Is there a better
way to develop empathy?

Each activity makes
teachers to admit, that there are things to be
surprised of on Numberland. They all have said, that
every time, they “go to Numberland” with children,
there are some wow-moments for them too. They
enjoy these moments with their children. Our teachers
learn to accept children’s viewpoints, listen to their
stories and opinion.

As a new approach to early years mathematics, Let’s visit Numberland
was introduced to
preschool teachers at their summer school August 2012.
It has been adopted warmly – as something they need to
teach children playfully, integrate mathematics with
other subjects and give children the opportunity to
acquire other skills.

Linda MacDonald, Nursery
teacher (UK)

We have
started Numberland and the children are
completely enjoying it!

Numberland fits in very
well with our Early Years Foundation Stage
curriculum for Mathematics. The book is great and explains the concept
of Numberland very well. I really like the
way in which the activities and ideas embrace a
whole range of mathematical concepts at the same
time.

All of my children are able to
name, talk about and describe simple shapes
with more confidence and use of appropriate
mathematical language. My children are now
becoming stronger in number recognition, counting
objects reliably and accurately and beginning to
order numbers. With some of my children I can
already see the improvement in understanding of one
more, one less, and the concepts of addition
and subtraction.

The children have connected on an
emotional level to the characters and are very
enthusiastic about the Numberland sessions, love
bringing 'gifts' to the various Numbers (in the
correct quantities!!), are becoming adept at sorting
out the problems that the naughty Hodgey Podgey
causes, and loved making medicine for the poorly
Number 4. A group of girls sat for a

whole afternoon making their own
characters (one to four) to take home and another
group made maps of Numberland, including Number
Lane!

(After 10 classes) The students
continue to surprise me about how much they understand
everything we’ve been learning.When I see the
students outside of class they will enthusiastically
bring things that they’ve found and count them for me.On number two: We told the kids that
we were visiting number two today, and our
introduction-10 minutes were started showing the
kids one part of a die. They then had to say the
number. After a few tries, the kid who was first
to say the right number, stood up and showed the
next number. Our second game was me saying a
number between one and ten, and the kids had to
tell the predecessor. I am still surprised how
much they liked doing this, but it seems like all
these very simple games are among their favourite
parts of class.

Now we
sat in a circle and started talking about the number.
If it is a number they like, if they use it a lot and
what reminds them of two, both in the classroom and in
general. All kids were keen on sharing their thoughts
and actively involved. We had a quite amusing
conversation between two kids arguing whether a bunny
has four legs, or two legs and two little arms when it
stands on its back paws.

After 10 or 15 minutes the kids started
drawing the house and the life of number two. That
meant that they drew a house with two windows,(although some
were convinced number two needs two houses) some drew
a garden with two lakes, two trees, a two coloured die
that was having number two on the showing side etc.
Again, all the kids like drawing, though some are a
lot more talented than others. Even though we have not
yet started a village with proper gardens for each
number, they grasp each number like a character when
it comes to drawing its house or garden. Some always
let us approve every new idea they had.